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WASHINGTON - The Center for Journalism & Democracy (CJD) at Howard University has wona $4 million award over three years from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to establish innovative academic and applied research programs that will advance health equity journalism at HBCUs.

The Center for Journalism & Democracy aims to build a pipeline of pro-democracy journalists trained in investigative and data reporting. The centers mission is to strengthen investigative journalism on HBCU campuses and build newsroom pipelines throughout the country. TheRWJF Investigative Journalism for Health EquityProject will serve as an anchor for ongoing, signature programming that fosters teaching, research, and reporting on the root causes of racial health disparities in the United States.

Health disparities continue to characterize Americans health, life chances, and life expectancy,said Nikole Hannah-Jones,the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at theCathy Hughes School of Communications. Health equity is crucial to a well-functioning democratic society, as structural health inequality undermines Black Americans ability to participate fully in the promises of our democracy. The severe and deadly inequities in health outcomes are not innate, but created through public and private policy that our student journalists can expose through investigative reporting.

The RWJF Investigative Journalism for Health Equity Project will provide general, unrestricted operating support to the Center for Journalism & Democracy. Additionally, the grant will fund the multiple new programmatic activities at Howard University and the centers HBCU partners. These new programs include the creation of a visiting professorship in health-focused investigative journalism and a multi-year investigative project with an HBCU partner institution on the intersection of reparations and health. Grant funding will also be used to create a new annual data analytics summer institute for emerging and practicing journalists.

Everyone should have the same opportunity for health and wellbeing in this country, said Allyn Brooks-LaSure, vice president of communications at RWJF. Yet that is not the reality for the communities who encounter daily and generational structural barriers to health equity, primarily caused by racism. The Investigative Journalism for Health Equity Project will address these persistent health inequities by shining a light on the systems and structures that make health and wellbeing a reality for some and an impossibility for others. This work will make all of the difference for communities and families striving to live their best and healthiest lives.

Kali-Ahset Amen, executive director of the Center for Journalism & Democracy, will serve as co-principal investigator with Hannah-Jones. Amen said the institute is designed to strengthen data-driven reporting skills and enhance analysis, narration and visualization of public health and other crises affecting the most vulnerable communities.

About Howard University

Founded in 1867, Howard University is a private, research university that is comprised of 14 schools and colleges. Students pursue more than 140 programs of study leading to undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees. The University operates with a commitment to Excellence in Truth and Service and has produced two Schwarzman Scholars, four Marshall Scholars, four Rhodes Scholars, 12 Truman Scholars, 25 Pickering Fellows and more than 165 Fulbright recipients. Howard also produces more on-campus African American PhD. recipients than any other university in the United States. For more information on Howard University, visit http://www.howard.edu.

About the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) is committed to improving health and health equity in the United States. In partnership with others, we are working to develop a Culture of Health rooted in equity that provides every individual with a fair and just opportunity to thrive, no matter who they are, where they live, or how much money they have.

Media contact: Sholnn Freeman; sholnn.freeman@howard.edu

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Investigative Journalism for Health Equity at the Center for ... - The Dig

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Professor Zephyr Teachout (Daedalus, Summer 2018, American Academy of Arts and Sciences) defines corruption as the exercise of public power for private, selfish ends. Transparency Internationals definition of corruption is almost the same as Teachouts definition. Bruce M. Owen argues in Sieper Policy Brief (Stanford University, May 2012) that there is Type 1 corruption, such as bribery and extortion, and Type 2 corruption, where politicians solicit campaign contributions from interest groups who in turn demand political favors.

Corruption of politicians, government bureaucrats and the judicial system is destructive to democracy and free markets if they primarily serve their own interests, lobbyists and influential rich people, and not all Americans. Crony capitalism, money laundering by businesses and deep-pocketed elites, including high-ranking executives trying to gain political favors, also undermine confidence in free markets and in the democratic system. Public and private institutions must resolve the conflict posed by what economists call the Principal Agent Problem. Politicians, who are agents of voters, must primarily serve voters interests and not their self-interest, and business executives, as agents of shareholders, must watch shareholders economic interests and not their own. Many other institutions, such as health care, face the same problem. Voters, shareholders or health care patients have no easy way to verify the actions of their agents if information flow is imperfect. Private media, as an agent of the public, is often not very helpful in providing accurate information.

Recent examples of corruption are insolvency of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and the First Republic Bank (FRB). News reports show that CEO Greg Becker of SVB sold all his shares in the bank close to 11 days before the insolvency. Becker lobbied congressional politicians to repeal part of the Dodd-Frank legislation, passed after the severe recession of 2018, to water-down scrutiny of midsize banks such as SVB. Similarly, cashing activities by executives were reported before the insolvency of FRB. Criminal conduct examples are the recent guilty plea by a former senior executive of Wells Fargo Bank and the conviction of Bernie Madoff for his Ponzi investment scheme. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has charged and fined major U.S. financial institutions such as Citigroup, J.P. Morgan and American Express several times.

Hundreds of corruption episodes and guilty verdicts are reported in Wikipedia against state representatives and local officials in most states, including Utah, and for many in the U.S. Congress. The recent corruption scandal has not escaped Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas either. The Center for Public Integrity gave Utah a D in 2015 for integrity. More recent corruption examples in the U.S. Congress are Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) for conviction of fraud, guilty pleas by Chris Collins (R-NY) for insider trading and Duncan Hunter (R-CA) for misuse of campaign funds. Former President Trumps possible criminal violation (not yet decided) in sabotaging the election of President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, and now a criminal indictment by the New York grand jury, are prime examples of corruption in the election process. It poses a severe threat to democracy.

Definitions of corruption also include corruption episodes (Type 2 corruption) that escape the legal threshold, such as the involvement of financial institutions in the insolvency of some major financial institutions such as Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers. It caused the severe financial crisis and recession in 2008. Taxpayers money prevented the financial meltdown. As Transparency International (TI) states, many times corruption happens in the shadows. The Corruption Perception Index (CPI) published by TI for 180 countries ranks the U.S. 23rd in the world from the top and reports its CPI of 69, even below Uruguay. The maximum CPI of 100 means very clean and 0 is highly corrupt. Denmark and New Zealand top the list. Corruption evades trust in public and private institutions and is damaging to democracy and the free enterprise system.

Free markets depend upon trust in the private sector. Past and recent insolvencies of SVB, FRB and Credit Suisse are examples of the loss of trust in these financial institutions. Untrustworthy behavior could also be found among many investment managers activities, treatment cost in health care institutions, monopoly pricing in pharmaceutical industry and poor workmanship in construction industry. Corruption also adversely affects activities such as capital investment, innovation, productivity, financial transactions, income distribution and, therefore, ultimately economic growth.

Preservation of democracy and free markets requires voters vigilance of politicians, government institutions and private institutions; insistence on truthful information; and accountability to regulations and laws. Delia Ferreira, chair of TI, states, Peoples indifference is the best breeding ground for corruption to grow.

Vijay Mathur is former chair and professor in the Economics Department and now emeritus professor at Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio, He resides in Ogden.

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Guest opinion: Corruption is corrosive to democracy and free markets - Standard-Examiner

Former Kern County Superior Court Judge Robert Tafoya admits he sat mesmerized on Jan. 6, 2021, as a mob attacked our nations Capitol with the intent of preventing the peaceful, constitutional transfer of power following national elections.

We did not all witness a direct assault on our democracy (actually a Republic). The election was stolen from an incumbent president and the American people. The process began the day Trump came down the golden escalator in 2016. The attacks have been evil, wrong and relentless. Nancy Pelosi even held impeachment hearings when Trump was overseas negotiating with foreign leaders. The only Americans who were misled to lose confidence in our electoral process were those who fell for the persistent and lying media in collusion with then-Speaker Pelosi, Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and former RINO Speaker Paul Ryan, current member of the Fox News board.

With those accusations, the good judge should have recused himself as a biased juror of the case in point, the attacks on Justice Clarence Thomas. Demonstrating the total racism of then-Sen. Joe Biden as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden viciously denigrated the character of nominee Clarence Thomas through lies and sexual innuendo (YouTube), never a question of his outstanding judicial record. In the 24 years of his role as a justice, his decisions have been both Constitutional and balanced. This is something the Democrat (Progressive) left cannot tolerate.

Today retired Judge Tafoya is all atwitter over the personal lives of Clarence and Ginni Thomas and American Enterprise Institute Chairman Harlan Crow. Ginni is politically active for constitutional causes. AEIs Harlan Crow certainly supports her constitutional efforts. They have a common interest and have been close friends for years.

Tafoya, of course, had no problem with $400 million being spent directly by politically ignorant and amoral Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg. The Biden cabal happens to be methodically destroying the nation, its military, and its economy. In case you havent noticed the relentless activities of the woke, please repeat after me: Bud Light.

Fifty-two FBI agents signed a document claiming the Hunter Biden laptop was likely a Russian plant. Now that the leftist, eugenic, perverse progressives are well entrenched, an FBI whistleblower participant declared the signed document was itself a hoax to affect the outcome of the national election, only days away. There are thousands of sworn and ignored election malfeasance affidavits from battleground states rejected by the courts as without standing, and repeatedly and endlessly mocked by the dishonest mainstream media.

We should have had personal ID verified paper ballot local votes in one day, like France. The electoral process Tafoya had no objection to was the strange stoppage of voting for hours as Trump was well ahead. Four hours that changed the world to a globalist woke nightmare, enforced by an election that took months, instead of a day. First Amendment redress is required.

Tafoya apparently wants to see the end of the Electoral College to put all political power in the hands of Blue states like California and New York. Forget flyover country. Of course, packing the Supreme Court and making the District of Columbia a state, assuring permanent Democrat power with two new senators in a region that votes 97 percent Democrat. (Drain the bureaucratic swamp!)

There used to be a rule that foreign entities cannot own American broadcast media like Fox. We now know what a bunch of evil avowed atheist raging globalists the foreign-owned Fox Australian Murdoch ownership is. Rupert is aided and abetted by the scheming mind of former RINO Speaker Paul Ryan, whose wife is a Democrat fundraiser, far from the constitutional loyalty of Ginni Thomas.

Whats a lousy $787 million Fox allegedly paid to Dominion to squash all other objections? The establishment even went so far as intervening with Speaker Kevin McCarthys lending the 14,000 hours of insurrection videos to Tucker Carlson. They clamped down on that one in a hurry, followed later by firing Carlson!

The American people must not learn that any Jan. 6 rioting and insurrection was led by dozens, maybe hundreds, of FBI operatives

Yes, Jan. 6 was Election Certification Day to certify a rigged election. President Trump had the First Amendment right to call for a delay in certification to redress grievances (not an overthrow as the mainstream media and Tafoya insist) to assure an honest review of the aforementioned dirty tricks. Patriot Mike Lindell put up $35 million of his own money to trace the movement of vote data transfers from Dominion and other open-back door voting machines to China and other locales, precisely located and identified by the internet protocols of the receiving computers overseas.

In conclusion, I want to thank Judge Tafoya for giving us two big, solid reasons to recuse himself from intelligent discourse on either matter.

Gerald V. Todd lives in Bakersfield.

Continued here:
Community Voices: It wasn't a direct assault on 'democracy' - The Bakersfield Californian

Mark Kinsler| Special to the Eagle-Gazette

On Election Day, continued the letter from the Fairfield County Board of Elections, You shall appear at the assigned polling place promptly at 5:00 AM to serve as a FLOATER PEO of such election. You shall take and subscribe to an oath to discharge your duties to the best of your ability. [Note: a PEO is a Precinct Election Official, which sounds grander than it is.]

How do we get into these situations? I wearily asked Natalie, whod received an identical letter.

Its your fault, she answered. You wanted to do your civic duty, so here we are.

Yup, there we were, at the AMVETS headquarters on Maple Street, standing in a circle of ten or so yawning oath-takers at five a.m. on a rainy Tuesday morning. Wed helped unload the election truck, one of 15 or 20 loaded and dispatched from the Board of Elections building hours earlier. Each contained fold-up voting booths, eight Dominion voting machines and their printers, a ton or so of extension cords, paper ballots, I voted stickers, many rolls of tape, American flags of assorted sizes, and four inexplicably heavy orange traffic cones.

All of which is to say that running a free and fair election is an enormous task, and our election ladies somehow do it with calm efficiency.

Weve been election roustabouts previously but were really still rookies. Everyone else was a ten-year member of the Sunrise Election Club, and all of them knew each other except, as usual, us.

Natalie was assigned to watch the voting booths and assist voters who had trouble with the voting machines. She worked with a lady who was, by regulation, a member of the opposite party, as the instructions put it. Thats because the law states that officials of both parties have to be present when a voter has a question.Its tedious, but like the other regulations makes perfect sense because it prevents anyone from fast-talking a voter.

I was assigned one of the voter registration machines: each voter would present some form of identification and, if I did it right and didnt put their drivers license in upside down, theyd be handed a coded voting-permission card to be inserted into the voting machine itself.

There are also paper ballots, provisional ballots, drive-up voter ballots, and probably others. The filled-out ballots are sealed and kept secret by several means, and I can assure anyone and everyone that an Ohio election cannot be thrown.

At one point Natalie and I swapped jobs, but I kept falling asleep and both of our elderly carcasses (carci?) grew painfully creaky from sitting so long. We worked until 8:00 P.M. and dont expect to recover for perhaps a week.

But the work was fun and worthwhile. And they pay us.

Mark Kinsler, kinsler33@gmail.com, is currently recovering with Natalie at our home-based field hospital in Lancaster. Two nurse cats are in attendance.

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Kinsler: We invade the Arsenal of Democracy - Lancaster Eagle Gazette

Rani Derasary has been a resident of Moab since 1999, and a member of the Moab City Council since 2016. She can be reached at rderasary@moabcity.org, 435-210-1647. Any opinions expressed here are hers alone and not intended to speak for other councilmembers.

After college, I worked for an international non-governmental organization (NGO) addressing negative economic, social, and environmental impacts of large-scale water projects (dams, channelization schemes). We worked in collaboration with regional NGOs around the world. A huge challenge for local communities was/is an inability to have a say in what happens to the water resources they depend on.

This is often due to authoritarian but sometimes democratic governments working with large funders (e.g. the World Bank/International Monetary Fund) to advance projects that forcibly resettle large numbers of people, promising to maintain their standard of living, and to provide water and/or power.

Time and again, this has proven a false promise; people forced from their homes are thrown into poverty; currencies are devalued, economies undermined; ecosystems people depended on for livelihood such as fisheries are destroyed; and promised water and/or power is often never delivered.

Central to our work was fighting for local peoples rights to have a voice about their communitys water resources, making sure there was democratic public participation. My colleagues were engineers, economists, journalists, academics, scientists, linguists, and policy experts.

I mention this to offer insight into my concerns about how water discussions at the City of Moab are occurring. Protecting water resources was part of my election platform in 2015 and 2019. Ive been taught that: water is in the public trust; a central responsibility of cities is to deliver culinary water; elected officials such as City Councilmembers should play a role in decision-making about water; and, to do this well, electeds should be as informed as possible on policy, technical and legal aspects, history and data garnering these from a combination of staff and scientists, academics and residents knowledgeable about the local watershed.

Im writing to tell you that my ability to make informed water decisions is being hindered by a decrease in the engagement and education of Councilmembers, and to invite you to be part of the solution.

Since January 2022:

promised meetings educating Councilmembers on water scarcity have not come into fruition, despite continuous pleas for them in public meetings, emails, and conversations.

meetings related to the Water Utility Resource Management Plan (WURMP intended to guide our valleys resilient water resource management for the next 100 years) have not been public, save one online meeting.

the Citys Water Conservation and Drought Management Advisory Board (WAB)a volunteer citizen advisory group created in 2016 to inform Council of policies and practices to ensure quality water supply for current and future residentshas effectively been disbanded.

repeated requests to have scientists and academics such as Dr Lachmarwhom many of you heard at the January 23 Moab Area Watershed Partnership (MAWP) meetingcome present to the Council have been met with dismissal, and: the City has all the water expertise it needs in the City Manager and City Engineer. I say this not to disparage those individuals, who certainly bring expertise to the table, but so you know of this consistent resistance.

the 4-25-23 City water workshop was attributed to my meeting requests, though I was neither consulted in its content planning or scheduling. I say that not to be petty, but to demonstrate Councilmembers are not at the table.

conflicting reports come to me about key officials engagement with MAWP, from: were actively engaged, to: were not interested in attending, or even aware of what MAWP does. (MAWP is a collaboration of diverse stakeholders sharing knowledge, developing, and facilitating implementation of a holistic watershed plan, which conserves and enhances water quality and quantity in the Mill and Castle Creek watersheds and their tributaries.)

At the 2-21-23 Grand County Commission meeting, Utah Division of Water Rights Regional Engineer Mark Stilson explained: its the communitys responsibilitynot the Statesto avoid getting into a situation where were mining our aquifers. Im asking: how can todays City Council look residents in the eye and tell you were doing everything possible to protect and make informed decisions about your watershed if we cant have regular conversations about water, or hear from the locals most familiar with our watershed? I consider this issue too important for the Council not to be investing more time in it.

Please join me in calling for these patterns to change. People around the world face prison and sometimes assassination for discussing their communitys water resources. Were fortunate in this valley to still have the right to demand its discussed openly in ours.

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Opinion: Democracy in an era of water scarcity - Moab Sun News